


Hello, Goodbye

by afflatussolace



Series: where you go fate will surely follow [13]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lalafell Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Plastic Memories AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27185236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afflatussolace/pseuds/afflatussolace
Summary: In a world with declining birthrates and where loneliness is a growing issue, androids named giftias were created for the purpose of forming connections with humans. However, giftias only have an approximate lifespan of about 912 days. The giftia retrieval service is an organization put in charge of the retrieval of giftias that were nearing that lifespan. Illya, a giftia working for the retrieval service is given a new human partner, Alphinaud.. who soon realizes that Illya was herself nearing her own lifespan.Reuploaded from myblog. For the ffxivwrite2020 event held on tumblr.
Relationships: Alphinaud Leveilleur/Original Character(s), Alphinaud Leveilleur/Warrior of Light
Series: where you go fate will surely follow [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971088
Kudos: 2





	Hello, Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #13 [free write] - Farewells  
>  _"an act of parting or of marking someone's departure"_

  
  


Her smile was contagious, upsettingly so. She shone like the stars that hung in the sky, like an angel descended from the heavens. Her smile was more human than most humans - even when she herself was only ever meant to be a creation that imitated the concept of humanity.

But there wasn’t a single person within the retrieval service that could bring themselves to smile for long in her presence. 

Because they knew - they knew of the truth that laid behind her smile. An expression built on a mountain of lies, of false emotions. And yet it was not because giftias were fake humans.. nor did anyone argue over the genuine feelings giftias could form.. that was, after all, what they were made to do. To emulate and form connections with humans, to fill the void in the hearts of people who lacked the family and friends to do so.

Illya’s smile was but a mask - a well rehearsed act played by the master of faking her own happiness, hiding away the words she truly wanted to say. It was a familiar sight in the office, but one that brought only a scalding pain to those around her. And the pain only grew with every day that passed.

For a long time, it’d remained that way. Her smile however dazzling and bright, was always met with a cursory glance and a curt response by her human colleagues. Even her old partner, a woman whose face wore the wrinkles that spoke of her experience and time in the field turned colder and colder, despite her own best efforts to smile warmer and warmer. But that was fine. A life void of color was most fitting for a machine. 

She thought herself to be fine with not ever seeing the warmth of another person’s smile towards her, resolved herself to being but a doll made to fulfill her duty and naught else. Life is cold as her circuits were. If she did not feel, her impending farewell will taste less bitter. 

But her new partner had contrary plans - a human who was determined to see her smile shatter into pieces, to see her suffer. 

She still remembered the day they met - and the first time she’d seen a human smile as warmly as he had towards her on that day in what feels to be her entire lifetime. And she smiled back, facade unbreaking, as she offered him a warm cup of tea before leading him to his seat. It would only be a matter of time before he too turned cold and looked away from her like the others did. As long as he figured out how much time she had left, realized that he was talking to a machine on the verge of shutting down. 

But that day never came.

“Are you okay, Illya?”

He’d always ask without fail every morning, and it’s vexing how concern towards her was feeling more and more familiar. Unplugging herself from her aged charging station was becoming a chore, one that her roommate and partner ever took great notice of.

“I’m fine.” but she’d always answer, as ever with an unfaltering smile upon her face that was only met with a deepened scowl from him. She was used to her smile bringing pain to others - and yet she’d sensed that it wasn’t quite for the same reason as Alphinaud did now. 

With a soft buzz of life, she turned off her own port, and spared not even a single glance towards him as she saunters towards the kitchen as nonchalantly as she could best act. Giftias had no need for sustenance - eating was but yet another act of human activity to sell their own humanity. But she was always strangely fond of cooking - of preparing food with her own two helpless hands and bringing joy to others, even when she could not herself partake in such a joy. She wouldn’t allow herself to.

“Ah, let me help you.” Alphinaud clumsily tosses aside his blanket, rolling up the sleeves of his pajama shirt and taking his spot next to the bewildered giftia.

“I-I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”

“I will, anyway. It’s the least I can do.” He flashes her a smile at a time when his smile wasn’t at all appreciated, and Illya has to turn away to hold back a frown beneath grit teeth. 

Stop being so nice to me.

She’d always knew him to be different from the others, or at the very least much unlike her old partner who had been more practical than she was emotional. He treated her in a way she never knew she wanted to be treated, he was at once her biggest headache, but also a salvation she never asked for. 

He was her biggest fear realized, a smile that mirrored back at her, and a frown that was birthed out of genuine concern for her feelings instead of his own. 

“You’ve been staring at that flyer for a while now. Is something the matter?” Alphinaud had asked once while they were out on an assignment.

He was also, infuriatingly observant of her behavior, something she’d grown so lax about after getting into the habits of being nonexistent in presence to everyone around her. 

Illya would clutch the hem of her skirt, fiddling with the lanyard around her neck that held her identification card. And when silence would not suffice to appeal him, she’d hide her face beneath the shadow of her bangs and stutter.

“N-nothing.”

“That’s an advert of the coming festival, right? Would you like to go?” He willfully ignores her attempts to brush his question off with yet another infuriatingly radiant smile. 

“No.” her swift answer only comes naturally, accompanied with yet another fake smile of her own. But the muscles of her face aches even more than ever, and she has to force herself to shut her eyes when she feels a burning behind her lids. “I’m not interested.”

What was the point in going anyways? What was the point of seeing the lights when eternal darkness was all that she will see in her near future? She didn’t know life outside of working, and when she hadn’t been working, she would sit perched upon her station with the lights in the apartment turned off, drifting in and out of dreams that she was terrified of having. 

But she wasn’t surprised when he’d turned up in their room that very same evening with two tickets to the festival anyway, loathed how genuinely over the moon she had been when she’d realized that he saw her through her blatant lie and went against her wishes.

“It would be fun.” he’d said with the most awful, joyous voice he could muster, and the incandescent smile he wore upon his face nearly breaks her. 

Why do you want to see me cry so badly?

It truly had been the most fun she’s ever had, and her own happiness upset her. The past two years of practiced nonchalance and lack of a care for her own well being had swiftly been undone within a matter of a mere few fleeting weeks. Weeks filled with a roller coaster of emotions, of dreamlike excitement. 

The fireworks that burst into a kaleidoscope of colors and bright lights in the sky deafened her, the weight of the jacket he’d insisted on slinging over her shoulders felt heavy. And as if it hadn’t been torture enough, twelve curse the man for slipping his hand into hers, knotting his fingers in between her own and pulling her close, forcing her to feel each and every inch of his warmth and kindness. 

She’d assume his attempts to break her was out of ignorance if she wasn’t acutely aware of the pain he was going through himself. If only she hadn’t been eavesdropping.. hadn’t heard of the way his voice shook and trembled when their manager had informed him of her remaining lifespan.

Under the dazzling starmines, were a pair of fools hellbent on hurting one another. 

“Why?” her resolve dashed, she cannot help but to ask with a hushed voice, barely audible in the midst of the booming fireworks and laughter of the other festival-goers rising into the air. “Why are you being so nice to me.. even when you know that i’m..”

For a moment he was silent, and she wonders if Alphinaud heard her. She wouldn’t minded if he hadn’t, perhaps convinced herself for a moment that that would have been for the best. 

“Do you not want to have happy memories before then?”

Illya manages a smile out of habit, but she has no expectations of it managing to fool him this time. 

“If I’m going to shut down, then I’d rather not have any memories at all.”

She remembered uttering those very same words to many giftias she’d spoken to, giftias who were themselves nearing their lifespan, and were due to be separated from their families and loved ones. And as varied in personality as humans were, those giftias gave her different responses to that very sentiment.

A handful had agreed with her, lamented their coming termination and cursed the system they had been born to serve and die under. Many others however had disagreed, and the smiles they wore upon their faces as they’d recounted the joy and love they had been showered with haunted Illya to the core every time she had to watch the lights from their eyes fade.

That should have sufficed as proof that memories formed by plastic would amount to nothing but pain in the end. 

“And leave this world without having truly lived your life? That’s not right, Illya. You deserve to live, more than anyone else in the world.”

Giftias were extraordinary, a true marvel of human invention and technological advancement. And more than anything, they lived up to their namesake of being gifts to mankind - to bring happiness. Giftias never truly needed to be happy themselves, or to live.. as Alphinaud would so insist otherwise. But what difference was metal and wires to flesh and bones if they could feel and think the same? A sentience that could suffer was worthy every bit of happiness they could experience. 

“I want to be part of your life, how ever long or short it may be.”

She could never forget his words, could not drown his sincerity from rippling through her. His voice replayed in her head again, and again, long after the colors of the sky had faded, and naught but faint dots of light hung above their heads.

The pale moon looked so much more sorrowful on that night than ever before as Illya sat upon her station, staring listlessly out the window. The only thing louder than the buzzing of her own circuits was Alphinaud’s breathing and the rustling of his sheets as he tossed and turned. And when her racing mind had finally settled on that accursed number plastered onto the back of her mind, her resolve shatters.

“Alphinaud.” He awakens to the girl standing over his bed. And though his vision is blurred, he could faintly make up the outline of her trembling form. When she speaks up again, the clarity behind her sorrow alarms him. “I can’t sleep.”

“W-what’s wrong?” the young man forces himself to sit up, but so nearly falls onto back onto the bed when Illya throws herself into his arms.

His warmth hurts her, the tight hold of his arms that wrap around her to pull her closer to his chest is suffocating. But she can no longer find the strength in herself to smile.

“I’m scared.” 

She felt like a failure, of a retrieval service employee and a giftia both. She understood fully why the people around her became distant, watched as her world grew colder and devoid of life in the past three months of her remaining lifespan. And she never once bemoaned their choices, because to associate with a dying person was to willfully subject themselves to even more pain.

Yet she’d selfishly and secretly longed to be proven wrong, wished for a warmth and joy that she could take with her past her last moments. And when she’d finally had her wish fulfilled, she could only tremble and cry at this gift, this treasure that Alphinaud has given her that she truly didn’t deserve. She would pay for this honesty with even more pain, she was sure of it. 

“I don’t want to say goodbye.” 

“I know.” 

She feels Alphinaud press his face into the side of her head, and his hand rises to begin stroking through strands of her hair, and she apologizes for the tear stains she leaves upon his shirt with choked sobs, spilling forth months of pent up regrets and sadness. Her last recollection of that day is the feeling of a blanket being draped over her, of Alphinaud pulling her against his chest and allowing the sounds of her weeping to grow fainter as she drifts to sleep. 

Her charging port is left neglected for a bed bathed in a gentle moonlight that watched over them as they slept in each other’s embrace. In the midst of that sorrowful and tearful night, it had been the warmest Illya had felt in a long while.


End file.
